Most programming language courses you'll find commercially provided are really "conversion" courses - intended for delegates who have programmed before, but in a different (or very different) language and environment. Our PHP Programming course is like that, and being knowledgeable in very many languages I can really help people who are converting by telling them what the parallels are between the language they know, and the language they're learning, and also what and why the significant differences are.

But there are also delegates who are completely new - or almost completely new - to programming; they benefit hugely from an extra day on the front of the course, and we provide that on our learning to program in PHP course.

On that extra day, I do not show people programs that I have written earlier - I explain things from first principles, and I write programs in front of them showing them how to do it from the ground up. I have them doing something similar on their own systems as we go through the day (it's not just following me - little point in getting them to copy-type!). And at the end of that day, I make sure that the programs I've written are available to them to rerun, to copy, to modify for themselves as they progress with their programming ...

Here, by way of example, is a note of what we covered yesterday and with links to the files that I wrote on the server ...

[link] A form to fill in to provide data to a PHP page[link] ... and the PHP page that handles the form input

[link] Building the form into the same page as the results so that you can keep rerunning it

[link] Starting to separate out the look and feel from the logic and calculations for easier ongoing maintainance

The next "learning to program in PHP" course starts on 16th January 2011. If you have missed that date, it also starts on 10th April, 19th June, 4th September and 27th November 2011 ... and other dates will be added in due course to the course description page (where you can find how to book too!) which is [here](written 2010-11-01, updated 2010-11-02)

Associated topics are indexed as below, or enter http://melksh.am/nnnn for individual articles

This is a page archived from The Horse's Mouth at
http://www.wellho.net/horse/ -
the diary and writings of Graham Ellis.
Every attempt was made to provide current information at the time the
page was written, but things do move forward in our business - new software
releases, price changes, new techniques. Please check back via
our main site for current courses,
prices, versions, etc - any mention of a price in "The Horse's Mouth"
cannot be taken as an offer to supply at that price.